like, okay, this clearly would have been a better post with excellent hires photos to illustrate it, but like. i'm still thinking about the beautiful rich black-tipped chestnut of the (huge!!) tail feathers and the bronze-and-verdigris of the breast and the way the down trailed up the back of its mostly-naked little neck and head like a tiny turkey mohawk, and the smooth sudden grace with which it flew up to perch on the railing, like a cat gathering itself and then in one smooth sudden motion: transit! only the creature is a zeppelin; and how facing away from me with the wind ruffling its feathers up in great soft ridges it looked like nothing so much as an enormous, astonishing pinecone…
holy shit turkey on the deck. god they’re SO beautiful and SO shockingly large. junoesque
And here it is: the bluethroat in all its glory.
it really is true, i think, that no matter where you fall on a moral spectrum you'll be shocked at some things other people are willing to condone, and will seem sanctimonious to them if you disclose as much; and that in turn other people will be shocked at some things you're willing to condone, and will seem sanctimonious to you ditto…
for context this post is brought to you by my genuine (and unexpressed, ftr, except here!) startlement at seeing a blogger i've historically considered conscientious admit to not recycling their cat food cans
i do wish my experience of having feelings (this isn't me being Vague, i do very generically mean 'having literally any feelings at all about anything ever') didn't automatically involve a meta-layer of feeling viscerally humiliated by the fact of my having them
like any time i get irritated or upset about anything it almost immediately tips into 'well okay but probably i'm the problem here bc i'm Oversensitive and Irritable bc i've failed to construct a life for myself which makes me happy in a way that would cushion me against being bothered by these irritants, which in the philosophical scheme of things i recognize i should Rise Above' (in this framing i am apparently an oyster and happiness = nacre). and it's not that there's no potential truth to this line of thinking but it also feels a little like i imagine having one's emotions blamed on one's menstrual cycle would feel (disrespectful & humiliating)
with things like sadness-about-everything-and-nothing-in-particular or, idk, private delusional romantic hopefulness abt people (nothing recent in this category but i have been known to experience it from time to time) it's slightly different bc there the meta-feeling is less about my failure to respond appropriately to other people and more about, like, why am i not advanced enough to have evolved beyond these feelings. like 'i understand intellectually how unfounded and ultimately laughable i look right now and yet. despite my ability to observe myself i still continue to experience this (unpleasant, humiliating) experience. why can i not think my way out of it.' and of course this is more or less equivalent to saying 'why can't i think my way out of the human condition' which. hello. and yet!!
anyway i think none of this is helped by the fact that my nearest and dearest are largely deeply phlegmatic, pragmatic people, at least in terms of the affect they present to me, and so by comparison i feel deeply histrionic and stupid and childish at essentially all times: Local Man Secretly Dancing Bear (unlike aubreyad where dancing bear secretly man). the answer is presumably 'don't compare yourself! you are a different variety of Creature! #IDIC!' but unfortunately the comparative impulse is i think. again. pretty deeply human (for feelings on which, see above)…
the biggest epistemological gap between me & 95% the rest of the world is literally just how much i love to look things up on the internet and how much it baffles me when other people don't like to do this. we live in the information age. like i'll google anything i'll read this bmj paper on the toilet i'll look up words i don't know i'll append pdf free to any possible phrase. i don't know how anybody is voluntarily turning this down. sometimes i get so tired of searchinf for something physically inside a store i pull out my phone and google like silken tofu aldi what fucking aisle while im standing right there. otherwise what is even the point
spent almost five hours clearing up my floordrobe and excavating my off-season bins and making decisions abt clothes i don’t wear and i’m not even done 😩
also. as long as i'm telling you guys silly little things. look at my absurd gluttonous beast who shoved her face into my tomato-y lunch leftovers and now has. well.
anime blush only orange.